Saddest Movies

I was impressed with the first 90 minutes and thought it was beautifully shot, with many potent and poetic scenes. I can see artistry here at work.

The scene where Watanabe (Takashi Shimura) goes to the doctor and another patient literally tells him that he's doomed was maybe one of the most powerful scenes I've seen on film.

Another powerful scene was where Watanabe overhears his son and daughter in-law talking about getting him to sign over his pension, which breaks his heart...a very powerful scene indeed. The scene with the younger girl and how she finally reacts to him was deeply reflective of the emotions in play.

The actor who played Watanabe and the actress who played the girl were both excellent. They could really pack emotion into a facial expression.

But the film lost me on some degree when he dies at the 90 minute mark of the film. That felt like the emotional end of the tale and I didn't connect to what functions as a epilogue in the last 50 minutes (the scenes at the wake and the flashback sequences). That part was well done too but almost felt like another movie.

The swing scene is poignant, yet the final scene, where we observe the playground from a distance with children playing, is even more moving. Although Kanji’s colleagues failed to implement the changes they seemed convinced to make within their bureaucratic confines, Kanji’s actions were not in vain and did effect change. This, needless to say, raises questions about the significance and scale of that change.

While intellectually stimulating and emotionally resonant, I believe melodramas should fundamentally devastate the viewer on a visceral level, preventing higher-level engagement in the moment.

Consider Sansho the Bailiff. Despite its depth, the film overwhelms you emotionally, making it difficult to think because you are consumed by tears. The lake scene in Sansho is more powerful and poignant than the swing scene in Ikiru, partly because it stands on its own. Knowing the context enhances it, but it remains one of cinema’s greatest scenes regardless. The final scene is equally exceptional. In contrast, Ikiru is more consistent, with each scene building on the previous ones. It exemplifies narrative cinema, focusing so intently on storytelling that it doesn’t excel in non-narrative elements. It doesn’t engage the subconscious as profoundly as many masterpieces do. In other words, there's nothing irrationally good in Ikiru.

Here's an interesting exercise: Consider whether a film can move you without subtitles. If it can’t, the story is likely the primary source of its emotional impact. The best melodramas should move you even if you don't understand the story. You should grasp enough to be moved, maybe it's someone’s death, maybe it's the beauty of the framing, the evocative music or silence, or maybe it's the actors within the space of the frame.

What moves us is subjective, but we can strive to understand how we are moved. It’s often challenging to pinpoint the exact elements, as they usually work in tandem, but this difficulty shouldn’t deter us from trying.

Ikiru is humane mostly in its narrative. Red Beard is humane both cinematically and narratively.

What film made you cry the most?

I definitely cried as a kid watching well-known weepers like The Champ (1979) and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), which I saw on cable. I remember being blindsided by the made-for-TV movie ”The Comeback Kid” starring John Ritter and Susan Dey. It’s kind of a poor man’s Bad News Bears in its set up, with Ritter playing a drunken minor league baseball player who has lost his spot and winds up coaching some under-privileged ragtag kids (including Doug McKeon the year before On Golden Pond). But at the end of the story the youngest, cutest kid gets HIT BY A CAR AND KILLED. Quite the punch in the nuts.

The first movie that made me cry in the theater is Savannah Smiles (1982). It is a very small, cheap little production that was barely released in theaters, but I saw it. Didn’t intend to see it. Don’t remember where my Dad and brother were that afternoon, but my Mom and little sister were going to see Savannah Smiles. From the TV commercial and ad in the paper I didn’t have any interest in seeing that, but I picked another movie that was starting around then at the same theater. I do not remember what that movie was supposed to be, but back in those olden days you got the movie times either by calling the theater and listening to a recorded message or mostly by checking the times in the newspaper. The problem with that, of course, is that mistakes can be made, and whatever time was printed in the paper was incorrect. Whatever I wanted to see started way after Savannah Smiles, so reluctantly I went in with them.



Savannah Smiles is a sort of inverse take on the O. Henry story The Ransom of Red Chief. A super cute little girl who is being ignored by her rich parents decides to run away. She sneaks into the car of two amiable escaped convicts, Alvie and Bootsie. By the time they realize there is a child in their vehicle they have inadvertently kidnapped her, but when they find out there is a large cash reward for her return they go with it. Savannah is ridiculously cute and sweet and irresistibly charming, and bit by bit these criminals soften up (not that they were true bad guys to begin with) and come to adore the little ragamuffin. At the end of the movie Savannah is returned to her folks while Alvie & Bootsie are arrested. BUT YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND! THEY AREN’T BAD GUYS! THEY ARE GOOD GUYS! THEY TOOK CARE OF SAVANNAH. SHE LOVES THEM! Oh, the humanity!

I was twelve at the time, and my Dad had already started taking me to see R-Rated movies like Stripes, Outland, and Conan the Barbarian, so I thought I was much too sophisticated for this silly kids movie. But there I was, crying like a baby. How dare they.

But the movie that made me cry the most, and it isn’t even close, is from when I was an adult. Lars Von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2000) absolutely CRUSHED me. Part of it was that I was going through some uncertainty with the woman I was madly in love with. She had taken a job out of state and was insistent that I not come with her, so that likely made me vulnerable. Extra susceptible or not, this odd, melodramatic Musical hit me in a way I have never been hit before or since. I had seen and been impressed by Breaking the Waves and I think I had even seen The Element of Crime by then, so I thought I knew what Von Trier was capable of. I knew who Björk was, but I certainly didn’t own any of her records. And then starts this weird, melancholy, artificial, stylized melodrama with a soap opera plot that on paper I would have laughed at. But in the hands of Von Trier it somehow became this intensely emotional exercise. From the song “I’ve Seen It All” onward I was either tearing up, crying, or full-on sobbing.

Mind you, that song comes about 55-minutes into a two-hour and twenty-minute movie. So for well over an hour I sat there sniffling and shaking with hot tears running down my face. I had gone to see it by myself, probably that first Friday afternoon it hit town. It was a small arthouse theater during the day, so there were only maybe five or six other people scattered around. But at times I stopped to take a deep breath I could hear them sniffling and crying in the dark. The title was a lie. None of us danced. We all cried. By the time it got to the end of the movie and she is hanged for a murder she did not commit…my gawd, I was a shell. I managed to get up once the credits finished and the lights came up, found my way to my car, but that was some intensely sad *****. I do not know if I hadn’t been going through some personal stuff at the same time if it would have affected me so strongly, nor if I had seen it at home rather than the movie theater. I suspect that was all a perfect storm, but however much the ingredients beyond the film itself may have contributed, Lars Von Trier broke me that day.

I think this really depends how one is feeling in the moment. I find so many relatively innocent films heartbreaking sometimes.

What broke your heart?

I’m not really sure. The most recent contender would be ChatGPT.

I am better though.

ChatGPT is a film?

No, but it did break my heart a little by what it’s doing to art.

Panahi’s White Balloon from 1995 broke my heart a little.

I always root for the wrong thing/person/idea, so typical ‘sad’ films don’t do it for me.

I see. There's always that pertaining fear that if you're watching a new film, you're watching something that was made by AI, i.e. the story was AI-generated at least in part. The worst thing is you start believing it was if it's bad even if you have no proof it was. That's the worst thing about it - you can never know for sure. That's why old movies are the best, although they started using invasive AI when restoring them now, so there's no escape from artificial intelligence, unfortunately!

It's been over 10 years and I still haven't seen it...

ALWAYS?! Or just sometimes?

Umberto D. 1952
The NeverEnding Story 1984
Hachiko 1987
Hachi: A Dog's Tale 2009

From another thread...

I saw ”The Comeback Kid” many years ago, and it brought me to tears, too. It's been remade a couple of times under different titles, but without the same impact as this movie.

I saw ”The Comeback Kid” many years ago, and it brought me to tears, too. It's been remade a couple of times under different titles, but without the same impact as this movie.

I don't believe it has ever been remade. It is such a generic story that there may have been similar plots, but not a credited remake. For example, the Keanu Reeves movie Hard Ball which even has the young, cute brother die at the end (from random gang violence, not a car accident) is adapted from a non-fiction book, not from the 1980 teleplay.



Man down on his luck finding redemption by reluctantly coaching a team of kids is practically a subgenre.